Bush and Hezbollah condemn beheading

14 May 2004 — 10:00am

US President George W Bush today condemned the "brutal" and "barbaric" beheading of US citizen Nicholas Berg in Iraq and, as horrified reaction poured forth, he rejected any link between the execution and the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by US troops.

A day after a grisly video of Berg's death appeared on an Islamist internet site, Bush flatly dismissed the claim by his killers that they were avenging the humiliation of prisoners had by US soldiers in the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.

Berg's family in Pennsylvania had earlier blamed the Bush administration for his death.

"There is no justification for the brutal execution of Nicholas Berg, no justification whatsoever," Bush told reporters on the South Lawn of the White House.

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"The actions of the terrorists who executed this man remind us of the nature of the few people who want to stop the advance of freedom in Iraq," he said.

The grainy video, on an Islamist website linked to the al-Qaeda terror network, showed Berg being decapitated with a large knife by a group of masked men.

After the killing, shouts of "Allahu akbar" (God is great) are heard and the masked men then hold the head up to the camera. Berg's remains were found on Saturday by US troops along a road near Baghdad.

Television networks broadcast portions of the video depicting Berg's final moments, but not the actual beheading, which was posted on several internet sites.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in a statement he was "horrified" by the execution and "condemns all killings of innocent civilians and all abuses of prisoners and other violations of international humanitarian law".

Lebanon's Shi'ite Hezbollah harshly criticised the beheading and questioned the timing of a "horrible" act which drove the torture of Iraqi prisoners by US-led forces from the headlines.

"Hezbollah denounces this horrible act which does an immense wrong to Islam and Muslims by a group which falsely pretends to follow the precepts of the religion of pardon and essential human values," the party said in a statement.

Ezzedine Salim, this month's chief of the Iraq Governing Council, insisted that "decapitations and mutilations are unacceptable and have nothing to do with Islam".

French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier called for a return to "rules and limits" in the Middle East.

German Foreign Minister Joshka Fischer, on a two-day visit to the United States, expressed his "horror" at the beheading, saying it had been "a cold-blooded barbaric act that we condemn in the strongest terms."

General Richard Myers, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said one of Berg's killers may be Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant accused of links to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.

The beheading video that appeared on the internet was titled "Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi slaughtering an American".

"It looks like the perpetrator, the lead perpetrator, might have been this fellow Zarqawi," Myers said in testimony before a congressional committee.

"If that's true, then this is not Iraqis killing Americans. He (Zarqawi) will do anything to stop the progress in Iraq."

Berg had gone to Iraq hoping to earn money building and servicing mobile telephone towers as part of Iraq's reconstruction.

He was detained for up to two weeks in March and April in the northern city of Mosul and was only released after the Berg family started legal action, naming Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

"They caused his death indirectly by detaining him without any right," his father Michael Berg told reporters.

"Even after detaining him I think they at least had an obligation to get him safely out of the country."